Gifts from a Broad

Thursday, July 30, 2015

It's been an interesting coupla years in Ladyland. We live about an hour from the Gulf of Mexico now, which has been an adjustment, to say the least. In Dallas we lived in a dry, moisture sucking, pizza oven, where we live now has moisture, vegetation, and steady tropical rains that are more akin to a sousvide water oven (look it up, kids). In other words, my skin looks amazing and hydrated, but my hair is a bit on the unruly side, and I'm in a constant battle with swamp ass. These days most of my outfits could easily be mistaken for swim suit cover ups, and I do not for the life of me, honest to John, remember the last time I wore socks.This past year has dealt our family serious blows in the form of the deaths of two of my brothers in law. The good* ones too, Las Vegas and Syracuse. So I'm left with the two scarier ones, Miami and Knucklehead. Obviously this has been extremely stressful for MDH, who in the case of Las Vegas was left responsible for cleaning up after his god damned mess.Last October, when my DH was in Austin with friends getting together and preparing to attend a music festival he got a call from someone from the Las Vegas police, to tell him that his oldest (and most seemingly normal) brother had taken an upscale suite with comped points from one of the swankier hotel casinos, where he stayed for 2 weeks before carefully laying out plastic lawn and garden bags on the sumptuous, king sized bed and blowing his brains out with a pistol.Apparently his body laid there for 5 full days before the cleaning staff alerted hotel management. Apparently his head was, for lack of a better way to describe it, gone.MDH upon getting the call immediately alerted Miami and Syracuse and it was decided that Miami would get on the next flight to Las Vegas to be with MDH and do things like identify the body, and sort out whatever needed to be sorted out, which turned out to be a fucking lot, and Syracuse would drive immediately to Boston so that the news of Las Vegas' death could be given to my MIL in person by someone she trusts.So that happened.

Fast forward to November. Thanksgiving weekend to be exact, when I never wanted to run away and join the circus more in my life because Miami demanded that the absolute best time ever to have a memorial service for Las Vegas would be THE FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING. Of course the absolute worst time of year for traveling. Of course the absolute worst time for someone who lives in the tropics and doesn't even own a coat anymore to travel to FUCKING BOSTON, where it's freezing fucking cold. Not to mention that frankly I really didn't feel like memorializing Las Vegas. I went because it was important to MDH, and that was the end of it. Syracuse had pneumonia and couldn't make it, which made me jealous, (why can't I get pneumonia and skip this stupid thing?) and infuriated Miami so deeply that he declared it unforgivable and that Syracuse was "dead to me", and refused to take his calls anymore.Anyhoo... somehow I survived that ordeal, and it WAS an ordeal, because anything involving MDH's family is never without dramas, death threats, ridiculous unnecessary complications and drunken brawls. Somehow we also always end up footing the bill for all of this shit, which only makes me more angry. If anything, I was glad to get to spend some time with my MIL, and hug her, and cry together, and reassure her that she didn't have to ever do anything that she didn't want to do, like go to this insane memorial service.Fast forward to late December, when we learn that Syracuse does not only not have pneumonia, he as been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and has about 6 months to live. He died** the 2nd week in March.In between the 2 deaths, MIL came down and spent almost 8 weeks with us in Texas. She had been home for just slightly more than a week when Syracuse died. MDH was with Syracuse when he died, and had been there for about a week and a half prior. He had flown home with his mother from Texas, because she can no longer fly by herself, and then rented a car and drove to Syracuse to be with his brother in his final days.Then he drove back to Boston. Knucklehead had been given the responsibility this time of telling my MIL about the death of her son, but when he arrived at her apartment he found her barely conscious on the floor next to the couch. Apparently she'd had a stroke the previous day, but just chose to lay there, her cell phone in her robe pocket, because she, "didn't want to bother anybody". This is the part where I scream.And I've pretty much been screaming ever since. Starting with finding out that she had out right LIED to me while she was visiting about what medications she was supposed to be taking. Medications which included pills to lower her cholesterol, which she told her doctor in the hospital after the stroke that SHE decided she didn't need anymore.It's now almost August, and she's still in a rehab facility in Boston. We're not sure what is going to happen next.In Part 2 of this story, which I will try and write tomorrow, I will explain to you the evil, conniving nature of Knucklehead, and the various ways that he has been nothing but a piece of shit since all of this has gone down.

*Tolerable and mostly polite to me, but still misogynistic and unpleasant to be around for longer than a few hours.*People die. They are dead. They don't pass, pass away, cease to exist, or whatever other sugar coated phrases people like to use. They die and they are fucking dead.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Life has handed me enough lately, and it's time to get real. I need to express my true self, which is something that simply cannot be done on Facebook (without consequences, like my elderly aunts trying to pipe in and help, or people expressing genuine and loving feelings of condolence, and/or sympathy, or my aunt Pauline responding uncomprehendingly in all caps to my sarcastic post a year and a half later and thereby opening the floodgates of unwanted responses all over again.)Then I remembered this blog, like a beacon of hope. THIS IS WHY I CREATED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!! And now it fills me with joy and a slight bit of disgust to tell you this:Apparently I post too many things about cats on the Book of Face because someone that I know, or used to know a long time ago, but am a barely acquainted with now online, posted what you see below on my timeline.

What the living fuck is this piece of shit? She kinda sorta thought I might like it. Jesus fucking christ what have I become?I'm hoping to recover from this blow to my self image, and apparently my public image in which I have become seriously uncool. I have become a crazy cat lady. I have become the kind of person who would kinda might like that bag. I refuse to believe this, and yet I also vowed when I saw it to stop posting anything about cats for a very long time, or perhaps never again.I'm also hoping to start posting here more. I'm thinking I need it. I'm thinking that it would be a really good thing for me to start converting the ugly poisoned thoughts in my head into something sort of funny, and thus turning negatives into positives, or at the very least neutralizing the situation.Oh my god. That fucking bag. What the shit, dudes?

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The same person* who takes great pride in eating directly out of cans (because it saves him having to wash dishes), and boastfully uses the same coffee mug, for a multitude of beverages from morning until bedtime, coffee (obviously), orange juice, soda, milk, beer (what have you), without ever rinsing it, is somehow also the same person who sparked out yesterday with an emotional decree:"You shouldn't open the blinds during the day!!! Eventually the carpet will fade."Um, what? Hey, fuck you Heloise. I'm opening the blinds.What am I Howard Hughes? If you suggest that I start wearing slippers made from tissue boxes because it helps prevent scuffs on hardwood flooring I am just as likely to tell you to go piss up a rope. On second thought, don't do that. There's a distinct line between fading and piss, let's not cross it.To be fair there have been a lot of emotional decrees lately. I get it, it's a new house, and we are filling it almost daily with new furnishings and bits and bobs. We want it to stay nice.1.There will be no eating or drinking of beverages, other than ice or water, or any combination of the two, while in the living room or while sitting upon or near any of the new furniture. (This is my rule, but I often find myself watching the new giant TV while standing just on the other side of the back of the sofa, feet firmly planted on the tile in the breakfast nook**, munching on a snack and thinking about how fucking stupid my new rule is and, if MDH isn't home, eventually breaking this rule by planting my snacky ass right on the new sofa and munching away.)2.The bed will be made daily by the person who remains in it the longest. (Or in other words, last one up is a rotten egg. This is also my rule. What the hell is wrong with me?)3.The kitchen counter and bar will no longer be a repository for mail and crap from the bottom of a purse or pockets or any combination of these items.(Yep. Also my rule. The rest of the rule should say: All mail and crap, etc., is to be shoveled haphazardly into the black hole next to the sink hereby referred to as "the menu drawer" before MDH arrives home from work.)I suppose the theme of this post, if there has to be one is that I project my crazy shit onto MDH, make my own rules, promptly break them, and then hide it. Seriously though, not opening the blinds to keep the carpet from fading?

Since I'm no longer allowed to enjoy sunshine in my own home, why don't we just never walk on it either. In fact, let's just kill ourselves (neatly, over plastic in the garage, don't get nutty, concrete absorbs stains) so that we can hover over the new furniture and finishes, enjoying the glory of it all as ghostly spirits, so that it can all remain perfect and pristine forever and ever.Maybe we can compromise and just wear sheets around the house in order to minimize the dust particles we shed.No. Fuck the carpet. I want to live. Preferably in my new home which, by the way, gets excellent light all day, which, by the way,is one of the reasons we moved here.Right. Now, please shut up, turn the sofa cushion over and pass me the popcorn. It's fine.*In hindsight I'm not sure that I made it perfectly clear that it's MDH I'm referring to as the person who eats directly out of cans and uses the same mug all day without rinsing it.**We don't have a table in there yet, so I will probably feel less stupid when I don't have to stand up while I'm snacking. Probably.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

What goes hand in hand with my obsession with the new house better than my obsession with decorating and furnishing it?Nothing. Not a damn thing.I have been trying to be ultra low key about it in my real life, with family, friends and the people I interact with daily, because I'm sure if I really talked about furniture shopping, out loud, with real people, half as much as I'm tempted to, that sooner rather than later, some one would come along and bash my obnoxious head in. But you know what? I can say it here, on my trusty old blog. Ahem:It's possible that I've never been more excited about anything in my entire life. Maybe getting married, but I feel like I have to say that. Polite society dictates that I should pretend to be more excited about love and family than I am about shopping for a new sofa, like a grown ass woman, for the first time in my entire life. I want to shout it from the rooftops - I'M GETTING A BRAND NEW SOFA!!!!I will love it, and pet it, and call it George. But not too much. I can't risk pilling or stains.Cue the confetti* and operatic arias from high on the mountain tops. This shit is important.In real life though, nobody wants to hear the ridiculous level of earnestness in my voice as I iron out the decision making process regarding a splurge on the suede toss pillows versus the more affordable twill. They will probably want to smother me equally with either fabric selection.Nobody wants to listen to me yammer on, bright-eyed and nearly combustible, about a rolled arm versus a track arm. Who besides me would possibly give a shit? Maybe MDH, but frankly I'm asking for his input as little as possible, lest he should voice a real opinion and cause me to not get my way.In fact, in order to keep him quiet and continue shopping as if I lived alone, I have placated him with the promise of something very special indeed. A reclining armchair**. A leather one. And if a leather reclining armchair is not enough to keep MDH out of my grill, this one is electronic. Oohhh... magical. Yes. There are such things as electronic reclining armchairs designed to appeal to the laziest humans among us. If you are so lazy that you can't even be bothered to maneuver a lever with your hand in order to lay down in your bedlike chair - this is the chair for YOU. Bang. Push a button and the chair will recline and come back up automatically.*What are you kidding me? Don't throw that confetti - who's going to clean that shit up?**Style of said armchair was subject to my final approval. I'm not having some ugly ass chair in my beautiful new house.

Friday, November 8, 2013

what's up chicken butts? This shit is harder than I remember and I think that's pretty obvious based on what I resorted to for an opening sentence for my first post since March. My apologies. I haven't written much more than work related emails and drippy Facebook posts for several months.I'll cut to the chase and dive right into a numbered list of things that are up my chicken butt:1. We bought a house. It's your standard Texas-style stone and brick, brown suburban house. Some might call it cookie-cutter, and I might tell them to go fuck themselves because I've been living out of goddamn boxes for the past 3 years and that's a tiring way to live after awhile.The house is entirely bigger than anything we'd ever need. We feel a bit silly since it's just the two of us and a cat, but we chose this particular model with my mother in law in mind, because there are 2 master suites on the first floor, so she could come stay with us for extended visits and never have to climb any stairs. I love my mother in law.2. The woman who sold us this house is a leathery piece of shit and I hope that I never have to communicate with her again after we close or as long as I live, whichever comes first.She looks about 800 years old, smokes electric cigarettes in the model home where her office is, and seems to think nobody will notice the smell. She has a tall, teased out Ladybird Johnson style hairdo and wears neon colored suits and turquoise jewelry. These things are all fine. In fact when I first met her I thought she was a hoot. Get a load of this old broad!You go 800 year old lady! Go ahead and smoke your electric cigs in public. Go ahead, be leathery and have cotton candy on your head and call it hair. What do I care? Good for you for somehow figuring out how to embalm yourself while still alive by using a combination of Aquanet, nicotine and Hawaiian Tropic spf 8. Way to go Leatherybird Johnson.But don't lie to me through your dentures and get my hopes all up about what the builder can and can't do for us, you sack of shit. And that is all I have to say about that.3. I'm still working from home and haven't lost my fucking mind completely. Not completely, although it is quite maddening from time to time. The longer I do it the more clear it has become that although the policies at my company are very open to work from home situations and remote employees like myself, the policies and technology used by the IT department (which is also my department btw) to support us... is ummm not designed to support us at all. My laptop died recently and it took 1 full week for them to figure out what to do about it. I had to ship it to them. Bullshit. Then I had to wait another full week after I shipped it for them to ship it back to me. Also bullshit. They wouldn't ship it directly to my home, because the policy says it has to be shipped a corporate recognized branch office. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.So I ended up going half the month not being able to accomplish much of anything. I could work remotely using (a remote system of logging in that rhymes with) Bitfrix from my home computer, but the connections are so slow and sketchy that the best outcome of this story is that I didn't slit my wrists when it took me an over hour and half to send out an email with an attachment. I didn't kill myself, but I cried a lot. Like, a LOT. As in, it's been several weeks and my face is still a bit blotchy.It's also a bummer as a remote employee to constantly get sent group invitations to lunch meetings, potlucks and having to respond to meeting invitations by asking for a call-in number.4. Did I mention that we bought a house? We finally bought a fucking house!!! Motherfuckin' A, man!! I don't have to feel terrible for hating my upstairs neighbors and their goddamn barking dogs and anvil footed children who seemingly do nothing but run back and forth across my ceiling all night and wake up screaming bloody murder every morning and carry on all day running around and screaming and tossing toys and shit off the balcony. Oh dear Llyod in heaven how I loathe them.5. I'm stressed out because we bought a house. We're moving again for the 6th time in 11 years. We still have that horrid house in Michigan that is still under water. We had a tenant, but had to evict him because he was regularly 4 months behind on the rent. Now the property management company has told us that no one will lease it out because the kitchen needs remodeled. So we're in the process of remodeling a kitchen long distance. IT'S ALL TOO MUCH TO TAKE!!!!!6. I'm a bit consumed with the new house.Anyhoo... that's it. This is all I can manage for now.I'm out of practice wrapping up blog posts into tidy packages with bows and ribbons like I used to do. Besides, where the fuck is my scotch tape? I can't find anything around here so I sure as hell can't find any ribbon. Get out out of here. This post is over.(I love you.)

Friday, March 8, 2013

MDH and I watched that movie Ted recently. If I'm being polite I'll say it wasn't my cup of tea. If I'm not being polite I'll say it suh-hucked.

Sue me. I don't think Seth McFarlane is all that funny. And I noticed that they used up quite a lot of dialog mentioning over and over again that Mark Wahlberg's character in the movie is 35. In fact they never shut up about it. Perhaps because he has the crows feet and furrowed forehead of a 65 year old meth addict and his acting is... well.. I guess we needed convincing.

Anyhoo... I've been bugged for days, not about the stupid movie, but because that damn talking teddy bear reminds me of someone. Who the hell could it be? That voice sounds exactly just like.... and that crass, dismissive manner of speaking about women and Jews and saying fuck in front of everyone ... if I could only.... it's right there....

Friday, February 22, 2013

My bout of writer's block has lasted long enough that I'm ready to throw in the towel and refer to the salad days of my blogging as a fluke. Seriously, sometimes I look back at some of my old posts and wonder just who the hell wrote them.

In an attempt to recapture some of that blogging magic I have decided to return to my roots. Yes. I decided to revisit the original source of inspiration when I started this blog - the largest compository of stupid unnessary consumer products - the Harriet Carter catalog. I also decided to check in on my other old favorite - Skymall.

Let's see what's new in the world of wasting your MeeMaw and PeePaws money shall we?

Protein Ketchup
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"Protein Ketchup is the first protein-fortified condiment. With 15 grams of protein, zero fat, and two servings of tomatoes in every "dipper-style" one-ounce cup, Protein Ketchup delivers the taste and mouthfeel you expect, with the nutrition you want."

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First of all, shut up and stop saying "mouthfeel" you pervert. And B, why not just eat something besides french fries and onion rings, eh Fattie? I shudder to think of what kind of terrifying DNA alteration would happen if you slather this shit on a genetically modified beef patty. I can say nothing nice about this except, at least it's not mayonnaise.

Hot Dog Slice 'n' Serve

I had to include this. I mean, what an important invention for the 21st century and beyond. Oh sure, laugh now, but we are going to need this when the robots take over and ban the use of all butter knives.

Pulse Massager and Pads

Apparently not for people who live alone. I mean how are you going to stick all that stuff on your back all by yourself. What a useless piece of shit. What else are you going to do with four little vibrating suction... cups... if you're at home by yourself... wait. Nevermind. Genius.

Hot Feet Microwave Slippers

Because your house doesn't stink enough already? I don't know about you, but my slippers smell like rotten chili-cheese fritos and are probably the last thing I'd want to put anywhere near a location where food is prepared.